• Journal of fish pathology
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.91-97
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• 2005

Bio-secure culture of olive flounder Paralichthys olivaceus in the IBK (Intensive Bioproduction Korean) recirculating system with dry pellet was tested for 6 months. The IBK system consists of 12 rearing tanks, 6 sedimentation tanks. 4-sectioned submerged biofilter chamber and channels. The size of each rearing tank was 3m in diameter and 1m in depth. The size of each biofilter chamber was $3.1\times3.3\times2.0$ m (D) and was filled with corrugated plastic plates as a biofilter medium. Total surface area of the biofilter was 3,789.7 $m^2$ Water was circulated by one of two vertical axial pump and circulating rate was about 34 times per day. A UV light sterilizer was used to treat inlet sea water with the flow rate of 4 ton/hr. All fish were treated with 150 ppm formalin 3 times with 5 day interval before stocking. It took 60 days for 'conditioning' the biofilter with the stocking density of 4.5 kg of fish $m^2$. The concentrations of ammonium-nitrogen, nitrite-nitrogen and nitrate-nitrogen in the system remained at the range of 0.096-0.315 mg/L, 0.015-0.504 mg/L, and 2.530-39.517 mg/L, respectively. Water temperature fluctuated from 17.5 to 25.1$^{\circ}C$ and salinity was from 30.1 to 33.5 ppt during rearing period. The fish grew from the average weight of 615.2 g to 1,201.1 g for 180 days. Initial and final fish densities were 8.4 and 15.9$kg/m^2$, Survival rate was 97.1 %. Neither parasites nor noticeable diseases was observed during the raring period even Vibrio spp. were detected from some fish in the system.